FLAT-OUT HUGE

SITKA, Alaska —  The sun hangs high over beautiful Sitka Sound, despite the late hour. Bald eagles soar overhead. A lone trawler plods north across the channel.

And Big Halibut Don, relaxing on the deck of Kingfisher Lodge, is getting an earful of big-halibut lore from a couple of newly arrived guests, all fired up about their prospects.

One says he heard of a man who, long ago, set out on a fishing trip alone in a small skiff. The man failed to return, and a search was launched. The skiff was found, but no fisherman; only a 350-pound halibut the man somehow managed to get into the boat, which apparently wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

Another shares the story about a large halibut that flew into such rage after coming over the rail that the passengers and crew jumped into the 50-degree water, where it was safer, until the thumping on the deck let up.

A tale is told of an angry halibut that reduced a large wooden tackle box to splinters with one swat of its tail; of one that snapped a heavy-duty fishing rod as though it were a toothpick; of one that swept a deckhand off his feet, causing him to fall and break a leg.

Finally, Big Halibut Don decides he has heard enough. He gets up, shakes his head and laughs, and then lets the guests in on a little secret.

“Those people were just careless,” he says. “I’ve never had a problem. I mean, I’ve heard those stories too, but I’ve never had them happen to me. I’ve had 80-pounders flopping on my deck, and all I do is go over and jump on them.”

Laughter fills the air as Big Halibut Don, who stands 6 feet 3, weighs 240 pounds and has hands the size of frying pans, heads down the stairs, inviting anyone who is interested for a beer at the pub down the street.

*

So the summer days go for Don Orrell, 33, an easygoing sort who moved here from Marysville, Wash., two years ago hoping to carve a niche for himself as a sportfishing captain in this historic island community of about 8,000.

He has done all right, working first as a deckhand and now as a captain with Kingfisher Charters, living in a manner that suits him: spending 10 hours at sea seven days a week and spending his evenings at the local watering holes, where just about everyone knows him as Big Halibut Don.

Life is simple in Sitka, a town with only one traffic light. Everyone knows everyone else. There isn’t much competition for fishing business because there aren’t that many businesses seeking customers. They are mostly independents with long-standing clientele.

Sitka is not your typical Alaska sportfishing destination. It lacks the crowds and circus atmosphere of some of the more popular destinations, such as those on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, where fishermen stand shoulder to shoulder on riverbanks trying to intercept huge king salmon as they make their way upstream.

Sitka, the only community on spruce-covered Baranof Island, a 150-mile-long arrowhead-shaped land mass just southwest of Juneau, is famous mostly for its scenery and storied past.

The Tlingit Indians, who carved towering totem poles and elaborate masks of war, called their home Sheetka, which means “by the sea.”

Commissioned by Russia, the Danish explorer Vitus Bering landed here in 1741, and 50 years later Russian fur traders established posts along the Alaskan coast. Alexander Baranof, governor of the Russian-American Co., decided to establish a permanent settlement in Sitka.

In 1799, when he arrived on Sitka’s shores, he planted a stake in the heart of Tlingit country with the establishment of Fort St. Michael. The Russians treated the Tlingits so harshly that they rebelled, driving the Russians off in 1802.

Baranof returned in 1804 with a gun boat and 1,000 men, and a battle ensued in what is now Sitka National Historic Park. The Tlingits eventually retreated and disappeared for years before filtering back and settling alongside the Russians, getting along as best they could.

Extensive fur trading, which depleted the supply for foreign markets, and declining political and economic conditions in Russia led to the czar’s sale in 1867 of all of Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million.

The official transfer took place at Castle Hill, overlooking what is now Sitka Harbor. Sitka remained the capital of Alaska until 1912. St. Michael’s Cathedral, built in the 1840s, still stands in the center of town as a historical landmark, as does Baranof’s residence.

Today Sitka is called “Paris of the Pacific” by some. Its economy is driven mostly by commercial fishing and a tourism industry generated by the hundreds of cruise ships that make Sitka a port of call during the summer.

Sitka residents have as their backyard a forest teeming with black-tailed deer and grizzly bears. Their inland waters hold salmon, steelhead, Dolly Varden and rainbow trout. Sitka Sound long has been a place to catch salmon, rockfish and huge halibut.

Commercial fishermen have had a foothold here for more than 100 years. But until fairly recently, there was no sportfishing industry to speak of. Now the sportfishing fleet is growing larger every summer.

Seth Bone, 28, a Sitka native who started commercial fishing here when he was 15, saved enough money to buy his own boat--which he named Kingfisher--in 1990. He got his start in the sportfishing business by taking cruise-ship passengers into the sound.

A year later, he had enough money to buy another boat. His brother, Heath, became captain of the vessel, and Kingfisher Charters was born. His fleet of seven sportfishers, which now ventures well beyond Sitka Sound, is the biggest and most successful in Sitka.

Bone; his wife, Seimeen, and their 16-month-old son, Andrew, live in a two-story house on a hill above Halibut Point Road, amid a dense forest of Sitka spruce. Next to the house are two lodges that house Kingfisher guests, process their fish and offer meals prepared by Big Halibut Don’s brother, Damon Orrell, a self-taught chef who is without doubt one of Kingfisher’s greatest assets.

Atop an old towering spruce snag between the two lodges, a bald eagle lands almost every night to watch Bone’s crew fillet the daily catch, which invariably includes piles of salmon, gargantuan lingcod and, of course, the dirty work of Big Halibut Don.

*

It’s long past dawn, yet dawn comes very early on a summer day in Alaska, and Big Halibut Don is leaving Sitka Harbor behind, speeding to the fishing grounds an hour or so away.

In the distance looms Mt. Edgecumbe, Sitka’s most prominent landmark, towering 3,000 feet above the forested slopes of Kruzof Island, which is just west of Baranof Island.

The ancient volcano, situated about 20 miles from Sitka, was the site in the early 1970s of what many here consider to be the ultimate April Fools’ Day joke. A town prankster named Porky Bickar, with the help of a few friends, hired a helicopter pilot to drop a bunch of old tires into the volcano’s cone under the cover of darkness.

Bickar stayed behind and, just before dawn, lit the tires, throwing some oil and smoke bombs into the fire for good measure.

“He had notified the fire department and police department because he did not want any repercussions,” his wife, Patty, recalls.

But he forgot to notify the Coast Guard, which back then had only a small base here. The Juneau base was notified and an investigation was launched.

The townspeople, meanwhile, reacted with emotions ranging from disbelief to panic.

“There was one teacher who was running down the street yelling, ‘We’re all going to get covered in ashes!’ ” Patty Bickar says. “Well, the story hit [Associated Press] that night, so word was out. Pork’s stepmother in Washington [state] called that night and asked me, ‘Did Pork have anything to do with that?’ ”

Big Halibut Don is not interested in this story. It was before his time. And it has nothing to do with big halibut, which is what he is all about.

“We got a 300-pounder the other day,” he says. “It took about 30 minutes. The guy’s reaction? Oh, he was psyched. He’d never seen anything like it.

“Actually, I didn’t think it was as big as it was until we tried to pull it onto the boat. . . . I thought, ‘well it’s a 200-pounder or something.’ Now a 200-pounder, I can pull that into the boat myself. But I went to pull that thing in and went, ‘Ooooooohhhhooo!’ So a couple of the clients grabbed the ropes [to which the halibut had been tied] and we pulled it in.”

Big Halibut Don zips past lush Biorka Island, more commonly referred to as St. Lazaria, a refuge for puffins and other sea birds. Eventually, he rounds Cape Edgecumbe and enters the Gulf of Alaska, leaving Sitka far behind.

Sea birds literally blanket the surface, taking off occasionally in bunches, flying erratically but in unison just above the sea. A giant albatross glides gracefully overhead. Humpback whales surface here and there, blowing plumes of mist into the light gray sky.

Big Halibut Don stops over an area marked by a slight rise on the ocean floor, showing some 300 feet down on his fish-finder. He drops anchor, puts on his gloves and goes to work, digging into a plastic bin of vile-smelling salmon guts, and carefully working them onto the hooks of his clients.

They look at the bloody clumps dangling at the end of their lines, look oddly at each other and drop the tackle to the bottom.

“It might take a little time for them to get a whiff of that,” Big Halibut Don says, “but believe me, they will get a whiff.”

Alaska’s Pacific halibut stocks are in good shape, biologists say, despite heavy, but regulated pressure from a commercial fleet and recreational fishermen, who alone harvest more than 1.5 million pounds annually.

The all-tackle world record is a 459-pounder caught last year in Dutch Harbor, on Unalaska Island of the Aleutian chain. But much bigger halibut are believed to exist throughout Alaska, as well as off British Columbia and Washington.

Kingfisher Charters specializes in halibut, although the fleet will target whatever the passengers want, including the increasingly popular lingcod and several species of salmon.

Legendary San Diego long-range skipper and trophy-hunter Bill Poole came here a few years ago to catch a giant halibut. He left with a 341-pounder.

Recently, one of Bone’s skippers had a group of four anglers catch four halibut, each estimated to weigh 300 pounds or more. They released all four, an admirable gesture considering it is these large females, which lay 2 million to 3 million eggs a year, that keep the resource healthy.

The ideal size, for those wanting to bring home some halibut fillets--and anglers generally bring home an obscene amount--are fish in the 70- to 150-pound range.

Even those can be dangerous, and Bone’s skippers are instructed to treat any large halibut carefully.

The skipper will try to keep the fish just beneath the surface, because otherwise it will go berserk; slip a large shark hook through its jaw, stun the fish with a sharp blow to the head, slip a lasso around its tail and quickly tie the rope off on a cleat and slit the halibut’s throat.

“And then you know that thing’s not going anywhere,” Bone says.

All this had Big Halibut Don intimidated at first.

“I remember my first trip with clients,” he says. “They were four nice enough guys, but I could tell right away that they didn’t really know what they were doing, and I was a little nervous because I didn’t want to be responsible for losing any of the fish we got to the boat.

“But they were serious about wanting to catch halibut, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I hope we don’t get any real big ones today.’ Well, sure enough, we get one up to the boat that goes about 250 pounds.

“I slammed a shark hook into its mouth and then went a little crazy. I took the gaff hook [which doubles as a club] and just started beating the hell out of the fish in the water. I’m swinging away using every cuss word in the book. I must have used 50 different cuss words. And then I realized what I was doing, looked up and saw everyone looking at me, and I look back at them and go, ‘Uh, oh.’

“But we got the halibut.”

*

Other boats from Bone’s fleet have gathered around Big Halibut Don’s, and it isn’t long before the rod tips start twitching.

The clients begin cranking up listless rockfish called yelloweyes, which don’t put up much of a fight but are prized for their tender, white flesh.

The presence of yelloweyes is a good thing, Big Halibut Don says, because where the yelloweyes go, so do the halibut.

“The yelloweyes are more prolific, so you’re going to get them first because they’re kind of everywhere,” he said. “They get there and start ganging up and stuff, and then the halibut come in to check it out and they run the yelloweyes off, and then the big halibut run off the smaller halibut.”

Sure enough, the yelloweyes suddenly disappear. One of the rod tips starts bouncing up and down; then it dips sharply. The passenger pulls up fast and reels down, giving the fish no slack.

He then starts the classic halibut battle which, it soon becomes apparent, is a lot like reeling in a garage door from 300 feet.

Eventually, the fish shows beneath the surface: it’s about a 70-pounder. Big Halibut Don is not impressed. He sticks it with the gaff, lifts it over the rail with one hand, clubs it with the other, slides it into the fish hold and slams the door.

The activity steadily picks up; the fish coming up are bigger. The anglers are moaning and groaning, having the time of their lives. (A chiropractor could make a killing in Sitka.)

Big Halibut Don says these fish--the biggest a 150-pounder--are nothing. The other day one of his clients hooked into a real monster.

“We’re just sitting there and all of a sudden his rod buckled over,” he says. “I said, ‘Whoa, that looks like a big one.’ He couldn’t handle it so I took over and grabbed the line and it just smoked through my rubber glove.

“The line finally goes slack and I’m thinking, ‘Man, this thing is coming to the surface, and then this humpback whale comes shooting out of the water with this hook in its mouth. I put my finger down [on the line] and broke him off.

“They called me Big Humpback Whale Don for a few days, but they still call me Big Halibut Don.”

*

Kingfisher Charters can be reached at (800) 727-6136.